WEATHER: Cooler and 19C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: It’s a toss-up between the Rwanda visa and my getting my Playbook running
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Rush rush rush
BUYS OF THE DAY: My micro SD cards
WORD OF THE DAY: Headless chook
On the road again at 9am this morning. No more sleep ins for me. It’s getting down to the business end of getting my stuff ready for Africa. I know it sounds like I am leaving the planet, but after my time in Morocco I am not expecting a lot of Western luxuries, like Wi-Fi and maybe even internet access, lack of shops for basic necessities that you just take for granted. I’m preparing – nothing wrong with being pre-pared right?
So back to the Mozambique Consulate this morning. They opened at 9.30am, and I got there at 9.45am, and low and behold there was no-one else there and my visa was ready!!! Woo hoo if only they were all like that! My next stop was to head to the Rwanda Consulate. I tried to call them yesterday as their office hours are not on their web site, and I was unable to get through, so I am just taking a punt and going to rock up and hope I fall within their office hours.
I’m on the hunt for more micro SD cards. I bought 12 of them with me, and in the 3 months I have been gone so far I have used 7 of them. They are 4GB, so I get around 1600 pictures per card. So, once again preparation is the key, and I am not sure if 5 will get me through the 3 months with all the animals etc. I plan on seeing. So I have been looking around in my shopping travels and the prices have been SO expensive. Like 15GBP, which is like $22AUD a card. I got them off EBay for $11AUD a pop. BUT I found PC World today and they had them for 7.50GBP, so I snapped them up quick smart and bought another 10. You can never have too many SD cards right? Another thing I can check off my list!!! I am on a ROLL people.
In the meantime, I was on the hunt for a ‘hotspot’ where I could jump on to some internet to complete the installation process of my Playbook. Stupid system that you need internet to set it up before you can even use it. I guess normally back home this wouldn’t have been an issue. I checked online yesterday and I know the Burger King on Euston Road has a ‘Hotspot’ so I was making my way there when I decided to pull out my IPod and see if I passed other Wi-Fi’s that I could get on that weren’t secure. I felt like I was undercover or something walking down the streets and checking for unsecure Wi-Fi’s. Anyway I found one only after walking for a couple of minutes. A large corporate building called Welcomnet. So I sat on the planter wall and got as far as passing through the setup stage no problems, but then there was a software update that had to be done and remaining time was 2 hours and 24 minutes! Shite, I wasn’t going to sit outside of this building looking like a toss for 2 hours! The time remaining kept changing from 2 hours down to 40 minutes then back to 2 hours, so I thought I would wait a little while and pulled out my book to read. Well after 50 minutes of stalking the company’s Wi-Fi, it had only completed 26% of the install and I still had to get to the Rwanda Consulate, so I had to abandon the installation and head to where I had to be. While I was sitting there I did get asked for some more directions, so out came my trusty map and I was able to point her in the right direction. I must have a big invisible I for information stamped on my forehead!!!!
Thanks to my trusty London map (again – told you I was getting my 2GBP worth), I found the street and consulate no problems and I was inside office hours. They are open 10am-1pm for visa applications. So I totally fluked it, as I got there at 12 noon. Well I was buzzed through and I was the only one in there, yay, maybe Tuesdays are the day to get visa’s, BUT the guy I was trying to talk to was also the phone guy, so the phone rang 3 times while I was trying to tell him my story, so by the time he got back to me it was 12.15pm. So I finally explained it all to him. Basically you need a visa for Rwanda. There are 2 ways you can do it. One you do it online, they send you an entry facility letter within 3 days and then you show that upon entry into Rwanda, pay the fee and you’re in. The other is to apply at a Rwanda Consulate direct. I chose option 1 and I did the online process back in DECEMBER. You received a tracking number and you can see the progress of your application which came back approved. As I didn’t receive the required entry facility letter, I left it for 2 weeks and emailed them, and again in February and again in March, twice. I finally got a response after the 4th email that said and I quote ‘this was emailed to you’. That’s it, absolutely nothing else in the email but that. So I politely went back and said thanks, but I didn’t receive it, could they resend it and all has been quite on the Rwanda front since. So as I am entering the country in 11 days this is why I had Rwanda on my list, to ask if they will just accept my print out from their web site and would it be a problem not having the facility entry letter. Well apparently this is NOT acceptable; I definitely need the damn facility letter. I told the guy that I had received this email saying it had been sent, so he said you’re here now, so you may as well get it from here instead. Sounds good to me, till he said he needed a copy of the email sent, a form filled in, payment to be deposited into HSBC (they don’t take cash of course) and I had to do this all in 45 minutes, as they closed at 1pm. So David (we are on a first name basis now), pointed me in the right direction of an internet café (was around an eight minute walk), to get the printout of the email sent from the Consulate, and while I was there I googled the closest HSBC, which happened to be 100m up the road, and there was no line up at the bank (I know I couldn’t believe my luck), and deposited the 35GBP into their account. As I walked out of the bank I realized I didn’t bring my passport photos with me – CRAP…… I had a wild look around and what would you know I could see a Snappy Snap sign 100m across the road from the bank!!! Is this my lucky day or what? So while I was waiting for the photos to print, I started filling in my form. I got the photos in my hand at 12.45pm, so I had 15 minutes to get my butt back to the Consulate! I half ran, half walked like a lunatic and got back there at 12.54pm!!! Talk about cutting it fine! There was no-one else in the Consulate again, so luck was on my side. So David took all my forms and I asked when it could all be ready and he said Friday. Ummmm I leave on Friday, he asked what time and I said 10am. Uh Oh….. So then he said where are you staying in Rwanda – crap, I left all that information at the hotel then he asked what dates do you enter and depart Rwanda – crap that was all at the hotel as well….. I looked so unorganized and I hated it. So we made a deal, he is going to have my visa done by tomorrow at 12 noon, and I had to come straight back to the hotel and find out where I was staying on the Gorilla Trek. All that was mentioned in the Intrepid notes was that it is a local church mission. I needed a hotel name, address and phone number!!! It took me nearly an hour of googling back and forth and reading a few blogs to get the name of the hotel, to then Google the hotel to get the address and then re-Google to get a phone number. It was a real mission, but I got the details and I had to email them to David ASAP, so they were sent through at 2.30pm. What a NIGHTMARE!!!!! But it is best doing it all this way now, than getting declined on the boarder and missing the Gorilla’s all together. So back to the Rwanda Consulate tomorrow to collect my passport from the last consulate. What a morning!
So at this point I hadn’t had any breakfast or lunch, so I decided to take my trusty IPod with my new gadget, and go for a walk to find me a Wi-Fi area to set up this damn Playbook. I only had to walk 10 minutes up the road to the Park Plaza Country Inn and they had open and fast Wi-Fi!!! They had a bar / restaurant on the ground floor, so I was able to have a late lunch and steal their Wi-Fi legitimately as I was a patron there eating lunch! So I got the whole thing set up and downloaded some books over lunch and now I am up and running!!!
On my way back I stopped down ‘my local’ street that has all the shops you could want. My supermarket Iceland, where I got a salad for tonight’s dinner and the check-out chick remembered me from the other day. I checked in with the Laundromat, and she can wash and fold my clothes for 10GBP, so I’m going to drop that off in the morning. The post office is also down this street, so I will send my next package home at the same time AND there is also a Toni & Guy Hairdresser, so I will see if they can fit me in tomorrow morning as well. I love where this hotel is located and with ‘my’ chicken shop across the road, next door to ‘my’ 7/11 equivalent shop and the tube a 20m walk from the hotel door, this place is awesome.
Speaking of hotel, my reception chicky was on the desk this morning, and her manager has agreed to store my stuff here for 3 months for .50p a day – now that is AWESOME news!! It saves me trekking across town with all my stuff and it will be here that I stay when I come back in October, so everything is just falling into place. I should go and buy a lottery ticket with the luck I have been having (touchwood).
I get to see some friendly faces tomorrow in the form of Aimes and George. They arrived from Spain today. So we have a date at the theatre tomorrow night to see Priscilla. So it will be nice to put on a dress and some makeup and feel like a lady for a night! Can’t wait to see you guys xx
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